Holiday Escort (16 page)

"I love coming home to you," she said. "Let's go upstairs and I can show you how much."

I smiled. "I wanted to talk to you about something first. Can we go sit in the living room?"

"Of course." I took her hand and led her to the couch. She pulled me into
a snuggle
.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Karen, I'm going a little stir crazy."

"
Winter
in Minnesota can do that," she replied. "It will be spring soon, and I was wondering whether you wanted to take a vacation somewhere? Paris is nice in the spring, isn't it?"

"You want to go to Paris?"

"I've never been. You've been everywhere, and I've hardly been anywhere. But maybe you would rather go somewhere else, somewhere that would be new for both of us."

Then she kissed me again, unbuttoning my blouse while her tongue was halfway down my throat, and my brain shut down. She led me upstairs and reminded me how much I enjoyed obeying her in the bedroom.

I tried to bring the conversation up again Saturday morning. We were lounging in bed, casually touching each other and just generally being in love.

"Karen, about the conversation I started last night."

"I'm so excited," she replied. "I am so looking forward to where you decide we should go." And then she was kissing me again, showing me new, clever things she could do with her tongue, and then soon my mouth was way too busy to talk.

So I started looking at places we could go. Over the next two weeks, I assembled four different ideas to present to her. I actually enjoyed it immensely. I assembled a basic trip to France: Paris and wine country. It would be a lovely trip. I assembled information on Buenos Aires, where we could experience the tango scene. The third trip I assembled was to New York City for restaurants and shows. The last was simple: a week at a resort in Northern Minnesota. I called that the love bunny trip, as about all we would do was stay inside and make love over and over.

After dinner on a Thursday night in mid-March, I presented Karen with all four plans. She looked at them briefly then looked at me. "Honey, all I care about is being with you. I've never done any of these, and they would all be new to me." Then she smiled. "Well, we don't have to go anywhere to make love, but the other three would be new."

"You don't have an opinion?"

"Not really," she said. "They all look fabulous."

I stared at her. "Do you want to go on any of them, or are you agreeing to go because you think I want to?"

She didn't answer right away, which I took as an answer. "I see," I said, gathering everything I assembled for her. I got up from the table, but everything away, and made myself busy by finishing the cleanup from dinner. If I had a place to go sulk, I would have, but there wasn't anyplace in the house that was mine. It was either hers or ours.

She didn't say anything for a while, but then I heard her get up from the table and walk up behind me. She put her arms around me and I tried to shrug her off.

"Madeline, wait," she said. "You don't understand."

I turned around to face her. "I know I spent two weeks putting those together, and you couldn't care less."

"That's not true." She paused. "Madeline, right now there are two things that matter to me. My job. And you. That's it. I have my job, and I come home and I have you. And that's a one hundred percent improvement from what I had in November, when all I had was my job. I am happy to have you here, or in Paris, or in Buenos Aires."

"Don't you like to travel?"

"Yes," she said. "But it's not important to me right now. I enjoy it, and I suspect I would really enjoy it with you. It would be an opportunity not to see the world, but to see the world through your eyes. But what is important to me is being with you. With you here, with you somewhere else, it's still with you."

"You're making it hard to stay mad at you."

She smiled.

"I want you to care," I told her.

"I care whether you're happy. I care whether we're together. I care what we do together. Do you want me to pretend to care where we do it?"

"You don't want to travel?"

"Sure I do," she replied. "And on a list of priorities to me, it's a top five, but only because it's important to you. Left to my own, it's maybe a top twenty."

"So you really don't care where we go?"

She paused. "Madeline, we are eventually going to do all your trips. I want to travel with you. It's not that I don't want to go, it's that I want to go wherever you want to go. So it's not a matter of which trip we go on. It's a matter of which trip is the right choice for when we're going." She paused again. When I started to speak, she held up a finger. "And something else to think about. Which of these trips should we plan with other people? Would you want to go to Buenos Aires with just me, or would you want to organize something with more of us, or perhaps go when Candace goes sometime?"

"You want to go to Buenos Aires with more people?"

"I didn't say that. I asked what you wanted."

I thought about it, then stepped into her arms and laid my head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around me and held me. "So if I suggested a choice between, say, Paris and Pittsburgh, you wouldn't care."

She laughed. "Paris." She pushed me away. "It's not that I don't care. I think going to Paris with you would be amazing. It would be a fabulous trip. I don't have a clue what we'd do, but I know with you guiding us, it will be amazing." She paused. "Here's what I want. I want you to take me where you want to take me. I want you to show me what you want to show me. I know whatever you pick will be fabulous. I want the option to veto a trip. I don't, for instance, want to go anywhere that women are oppressed or that we can get into trouble if someone sees us kissing. I don't want to go anywhere an American accent is dangerous. I'd rather do the Minnesota resort trip in the dead of winter or during the swimming season
." She paused again. "And I'd like some high adventure trips."

"Alaska?"

"Yes. Or even the Boundary Waters Canoe Area."

"You would go canoeing and camping?"

"Yes, if that's something you enjoy. But not during high mosquito season."

I laughed.

"So you want to go to Paris with me?"

"Yes, Madeline, I very much want to go to Paris with you."

"You're right about Buenos Aires. I'd rather go with more people. May I book a Paris trip?"

"Yes. Any time. I need at least one week's notice. Maybe make it a long week. Please plan for jet lag recovery on arriving."

And then she pulled me into her arms again and kissed me.

All was right with the world.

After that, she helped me finish cleaning up,
then
she suddenly stiffened. "Are you busy tomorrow for lunch?"

"No." I smiled at her. "Lunch with you?"

"Lunch with me. And David and Jenny."

"Ah, they're back from their trip."

"Yes. David specifically asked me to invite you to lunch tomorrow."

* * *

Friday lunch was fun. I met Karen at her office. We met with David and Jenny at David's office, then the four of us walked to an upscale restaurant two blocks from the office.

Karen flirted openly with me in front of them. I enjoyed the attention.

Jenny remembered me from the Scotland trip. "I had such a good time, and you took such good care of us," she said, once we had ordered our meals. "Not at all like the Australia trip."

"Oh no," I said. "What happened?"

David scowled. "Australia was great, but we won't be using Henderson Travel in the future."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I replied. Secretly I was also a little pleased to know Caroline had screwed up, and now I wanted details.

Jenny said, "We didn't like Caroline Henderson."

"Her husband sure liked you, Jenny," David said.

"Not as much as he liked Caroline's assistant."

I looked over at Karen. She clasped my hand.

Jenny looked at me. "Let me ask you something. Imagine you were organizing a trip to Australia. Everyone is going to fly in to Sydney, arriving at eight in the morning. What would you put on the schedule for the first day?"

"Check in the hotel and then small, simple events at the hotel so people don't go to sleep. Keep them up all day, early dinner, and let them go to bed early. Everyone's clock is going to be completely screwed up."

"So you wouldn't for instance, plan a major outing to the opera house for a show?"

I looked at her in horror. "Seriously?"

She nodded.

"We spent three days in Sydney."

"I would have made the opera house the highlight of the time in Sydney and planned it for the last night there."

"After that we went up to the Gold Coast."

"Excellent."

"By motor coach."

I thought about it. "That seems like a long bus ride, especially for a luxury trip."

"Caroline said she'd looked at a map and thought, 'It doesn't look that far'," David said.

"She didn't run the trip herself ahead of time?"

"She said it was her first time to Australia."

"Oh god," I said. "The entire idea of the President Trips are that she's supposed to be able to actually show you the out of the way places, the places a local might take a friend. You can't do that if you don't go there yourself first.
You have to stay at all the hotels, or at least check them out, to make sure they are as good as they look. You do all the same travel so you know what the roads are like and how long it really takes. You basically run the entire trip. You need to know if a particular restaurant can handle someone in a wheelchair. The details are enormous. It's not a budget trip and shouldn't be treated like one.
"

"I paused. Caroline should know all this. She's attended several of the President's trips Marsha and I ran."

Karen asked, "Did she help plan them or just attend?"

"I planned them. By then, Marsha was the smiling face of the company, but I was doing everything behind the scenes."

"We never saw the Great Barrier Reef," David said. "That was my main reason for wanting to go.
"

"Oh no!"

"There was some snafu with the arrangements," Jenny said. "David was devastated. We sat on the beach instead. That was the alternate arrangement Caroline made."

"I got my scuba diving certificate specifically for this trip," David said. "I would sue Henderson Travel, but it's not worth the headache."

Jenny looked at me. "I have a question for you, Madeline." I nodded. "Are you secretly pleased to hear all this?"

"Why would I be pleased you had a horrible trip?"

"Your name came up with Caroline," Jenny said. "Not by us. Another couple, George and Betty, mentioned you."

"The
Trents
? Oh, they're lovely people," I said.

"George told Caroline, 'None of this would have happened if
Madeline had been
here.' Caroline's response was something about you should have kept your hands off her husband."

"That bitch!"

Jenny laughed. "That's the word Betty used later. We all saw how John was treating the women. I bet you couldn't keep your hands off him because you were so busy pushing him off of you."

I looked at Karen. "I don't think I should respond to that without my lawyer's advice. I wouldn't want to say something libelous."

Karen laughed. "Slander."

Jenny said, "I thought you might be happy to hear Caroline Henderson is running the company into the ground."

I thought about it. "Actually, I'm not. I feel vindicated, but not happy. Marsha spent her life building that company and giving it an excellent name. I spent ten years of my life helping her, and I was proud to work there. While I don't mind feeling vindicated, I would have wanted Caroline to have successfully carried the company forward. It's going to kill Marsha when this gets back to her."

Jenny paused. "If it's any consolation, we understand the fall President's trip went well. They went to Paris. Another couple on the Australia trip had gone, and they told us all about it."

I thought about it then started describing the trip. "Yes, that's exactly what they described," Jenny said when we were done.

I sighed. "That's the trip I ran two years ago. Caroline was along. It sounds like she duplicated the trip I ran. Those trips are supposed to be unique. You should be able to go every six months and have a different, unique trip. She shouldn't have duplicated one we'd done just two years previously. Going to Paris would have been fine, but the same restaurants and hotels?" I sighed again.

The food came. I immediately stole something from Karen's plate,
then
put my head on her shoulder for a moment before turning to her and telling her, "I love you."